A game that shows how an infectious disease might spread through a community, using real data and real people's decisions whether to stay home each week.
Analyzing 21,000 words for relational and thematic insights.
How America moves its homeless.
Digging through a decade of Google travel searches.
A twelve-month collaboration with the brilliant Nadieh Bremer of Visual Cinnamon.
Each month, we choose a topic and build a visualization by the end of the month; an opportunity to experiment and create. In the process, we document the trials and successes we faced wrangling the data, sketching, and coding the visualization.
A physical, interactive data installation of women in computing.
An exploration of five individuals and their interactions with Send Me SFMOMA for a week.
A 3D visualization of the 51 female Noble Laureates and their accomplishments.
A series of workshops geared towards frontend developers, taking them from the very basics of D3.js to analyzing and designing their own custom data visualizations.
An analysis of the 2017 Data Visualization Community Survey, and a writeup of the areas we as a community can work to better.
ShirleyChats: a series of live chats with friends in the data visualization and tech industries.
N/A
JSConf JP 2019 // Tokyo, Japan // November 30, December 1, 2019
Web Unleashed 2019 // Toronto, Canada // September 13-14, 2019
WeAreDevelopers WorldCongress β19 // Berlin, Germany // June 6-7, 2019
J on the Beach 2019 // Marbella, Spain // May 16-17, 2019
beyond tellerrand 2019 // DΓΌsseldorf, Germany // May 13-14, 2019
ImageCon 2019 // San Francisco, CA // May 1-2, 2019
Malofiej27 // Pamplona, Spain // March 25-29, 2019
Coldfront Conf 2018 // Copenhagen, Denmark // November 13-14, 2018
ChicagoJS 2018 // Chicago, IL // September 22, 2018
React Rally 2018 // Salt Lake City, UT // August 16-17, 2018
Concatenate 2018 // Remote // August 10-11, 2018
enterJS 2018 // Darmstadt, Germany // June 19-22, 2018
React Amsterdam 2018 // Amsterdam, Netherlands // April 13, 2018
JSConf Asia 2018 // Singapore // January 25-27, 2018
GDG DevFest 2017 // Mountain View, USA // December 16, 2017
Tokyo Node Festival 2017 // Tokyo, Japan // November 25-26, 2017
Reactive Conf 2017 // Bratislava, Slovakia // October 25-27, 2017
ReactNext 2017 // Tel Aviv, Israel // September 10, 2017
Reasons To 2017 (elevator pitch) // Brighton, UK // September 4-6, 2017
React Rally 2017 // Salt Lake City, UT // August 24-25, 2017
CSSConf EU 2017 // Berlin, Germany // May 5, 2017
Openvis Conf 2017 // Boston, MA // April 24, 2017
Openvis Conf 2016 // Boston, MA // April 25, 2016
BackboneConf 2014 // Boston, MA // December 15, 2014
Nightingale: How Do You Simulate a Pandemic? // May 15, 2020
Dataviz Today: How to Find New Collaborators and Execute a Complex Project // May 5, 2020
Tableau: Social distancing, three data-driven simulations will show you just how important it is // May 5, 2020
Learn with Jason: Generative Data Visualization, part 3 // April 14, 2020
Tech+Art Podcast: Shirley Wu, Software Engineer & Data Visualization Freelancer // March 26, 2020
egghead.io: How Shirley Wu Built A Career As A Freelance Data Visualizer // March 17, 2020
Nextstrain Onboarding with Colin Megill // March 13, 2020
The Entrepreneurial Coder Podcast: How To Be A Successful Niche Freelancer // January 21, 2020
The Coding Train: Introduction to D3.js with Shirley Wu // November 15, 2019
Learn with Jason: Generative Data Visualization Design and Planning, part 2 // November 8, 2019
Learn with Jason: Generative Data Visualization Design and Planning // October 15, 2019
Chats with Kent: Lessons Learned From Four Major Projects with Shirley Wu // August 8, 2019
Frontend Happy Hour: The art of mixology - creative coding // August 4, 2019
net August 2019: Voices Interview // August 2019
Data Visualization: A Lesson and Listen Series // April 5, 2019
Fun Fun Function: Data visualization chat // December 10, 2018
React Podcast: Data Visualization with Shirley Wu // August 7, 2018
Frontend Happy Hour: Shots to growlers // June 24, 2018
Dataviz Today: How to Find Answers in Survey Results // March 13, 2018
Frontend Happy Hour: Independent Taste Testing // January 21, 2018
Frontend Happy Hour: Champagne ideas and caviar dreams // October 15, 2017
Data is Beautiful Subreddit: Ask Me Anything! // October 12, 2017
Frontend Masters Path to Mastery: Saying Yes to Challenges // September 14, 2017
Quick Questions with Shirley Wu // August 12, 2017
Frontend Happy Hour: Plotting our drinks // July 17, 2017
Data Stories: Data Sketches with Nadieh Bremer and Shirley Wu // May 17, 2017
Toolsday: Data Sketches // May 16, 2017
Animation in Dataviz β An Interview with Nadieh Bremer and Shirley Wu // April 27th, 2017
Elsie Cast: Data Visualization // February 13, 2017
Modern Web: Data Visualization on the Web with DataSketches // December 1, 2016
2018, A Year in Review // January 7, 2019
655 Frustrations Doing Data Visualization // September 21, 2017
2015, A Year in Review // January 15, 2016
On D3, React, and a little bit of Flux // July 13, 2015
Understanding the Force // July 22, 2014
An Interactive Introduction to D3.js // July 18, 2014
Marrying Backbone.js and D3.js, a Follow-up // July 5, 2014
Marrying Backbone.js and D3.js // May 9, 2013
When I was a kid, I loved two things: math and art. I wanted to be a painter or Pixar animator when I grew up. When I entered high school, I took an exhaustive number of math and science classes. By the end of the four years, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.
So naturally, my eighteen-year-old self decided that business would be the exact opposite and be my raison d'Γͺtre. Fast-forward three years to my junior year, and I realized I abhored my business classes and adored the few Computer Science classes I took. When I completed my summer internship at an investment bank, I knew that I couldn't go back. I decided that I would focus my senior year on completing a CS minor and looking for a full-time job in software engineering.
(My friends told me they had expected this of me all along: "why did you even go into business, anyway?")
And somehow, miraculously, I landed a full-time position at Splunk post-graduation. (I was beside myself with relief and joy.) I was introduced to D3 as part of my job, and slowly fell in love with its genius. I adored D3 and the broader field of data visualization; they felt like a beautiful combination of art and code.
When I started at Illumio, I was happy with my technical knowledge, but wanted to apply it and build a long-term project from the ground up. Illumination allowed me to do that; I learned so much about teamwork, and the joys and pitfalls of building out a piece of the product from its inception.
I left Illumio in the summer of 2016, and have been trying my hand at freelancing since. It's been an amazing (though stressful) ride, and I've had the opportunity to work with companies in a wide variety of industries. It's been eye-opening to learn about their products, their problem statements, and their philosophies. I've also had the opportunity to step away from product, and try my hand at narrative and storytelling.
I'm hoping to keep freelancing for as long as I can. I'm still excited to see where I go from here.